The University of North Carolina Press has been selected as the publisher of the first comprehensive history of twentieth century contemporary studio crafts in the United States. The book will serve as a reference and an undergraduate crafts history text. It has been a priority project of the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, a regional center of the University of North Carolina, since a Center-sponsored retreat of national craft leaders recommended commissioning such a work in 2002. The retreat participants concluded that this would be the most important venture the Center could undertake in its mission to support and advance craft. The co-authors--Janet Koplos, senior editor of Art in America, and author and jeweler Bruce Metcalf--began research in 2004 and are near completion of the text.

This book, the first to encompass the field as a whole and chart the rapid changes and developments of the modern period, will focus on studio crafts and their steady trajectory from the workshops of the Arts & Crafts Movement into art schools, galleries, and museums. Following a decade-by-decade structure, the book will offer a full discussion of aesthetics. It will also introduce and explain sociopolitical and stylistic changes in crafts over the course of the century as well as such related matters as government support, education, and publications.

The book will be suitable for use in a typical one-semester college course. Written accessibly, in clear and vivid language, it will contain approximately 500 images. The authors are grounding the work in the social context of craft practice. The main focus will be the objects and the makers themselves. The goal of the book is to engage readers, raise important issues, foster critical understanding, and place crafts in a broader context.

The University of North Carolina Press provided the Center with a comprehensive publishing proposal, including a detailed marketing plan. The Press and the Center are committed to keeping the work in print as long as possible in an effort to support colleges and universities that will, over time, be adding crafts history courses to their curriculum.

Serious scholarship in United States crafts history and criticism is also the focus of two other publications projected for release by the University of North Carolina Press in 2008. TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF CRAFT: REMARKS ON THE THEORETICAL AND AESTHETIC NATURE OF A DISCIPLINE by Howard Risatti, professor emeritus of art history at Virginia Commonwealth University, answers the question, “What is a craft object?” Risatti bases his discussion on the premise that function is an important, if not essential, defining aspect of craft and that function continues to play a fundamental role in craft, even in contemporary studio craft. CHOOSING CRAFT: A HISTORY IN ARTISTS’ WORDS, edited by Diane Douglas, director of the Center for Liberal Arts at Bellevue Community College, and Vicki Halper, a curator and writer specializing in crafts of the United States and modern art of the Pacific Northwest, will be the first sourcebook of the words and writings of artists working in the studio crafts in the United States between 1945 and 2000. Topics to be covered include finding a medium, getting an education, and making a living. The editors also have gathered observations from craftspeople on such matters as defining the field, confronting tradition, and critiquing culture.

The University of North Carolina Press has a special interest in the history and practice of craft, which is unsurprising in a state where craft traditions date back more than a century and where so many contemporary craft artists choose to live and work.

CCCD Director Dian Magie, and board members wood sculpture Stoney Lamar, The Furniture Society director Andrew Glasgow, and Penland School of Crafts Director Jean McLaughlin, were invited and will be attending this important national conference of the American Craft Council, taking place in Houston, Texas, October 19-21. Internationally recognized sculptor Martin Puryear is the keynote speaker with sessions on New Artists, Craft in Museums, and Scholarship and Critical Writing.